


A Waterlogged Puffskein

by wildeisms



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Autistic Newt Scamander, Intoxication, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 14:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildeisms/pseuds/wildeisms
Summary: In Newt’s defence, he hadn’t actually known that his drinks contained alcohol when he had downed three of them.





	A Waterlogged Puffskein

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who wrote another procrastination fic! For some reason, the idea of drunk and oblivious Newt getting hit on in a bar came into my head and I just went with it.

In Newt’s defence, he hadn’t actually known that his drinks contained alcohol when he had downed three of them. In retrospect, he probably should have noticed that there was something awry, but this ridiculous country was supposed to have a ban on alcohol and he’d been so preoccupied with giving his hands and mouth something to do while he waited that it didn’t cross his mind until it was too late. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that he was in the type of establishment that would flout these rules, and of course, no one had told him.

But there he was, and he was drunk before his sweetheart had even arrived. This definitely wasn’t supposed to have happened. 

“You okay, hon?” a low, husky voice asked, and he looked up to see a young, dark haired woman leaning up against the bar next to him, dressed in a short, sparkly dress that caught the soft light whenever she moved.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, thank you,” he said, and he sincerely hoped he wasn’t slurring. He didn’t actually know how much alcohol had been in his drinks, but he knew his brain felt slow and fuzzy. Like a puffskein. The thought of having a puffskein for a brain made him giggle, and the woman giggled too, although she probably didn’t know what was funny. Unless she was a legilimens, of course. Perhaps she was. He thought ‘please tell me if you’re reading my mind’ with all his might, but she didn’t react other than to bite her lip and look him up and down. Probably not, then.

“You not usually a drinker?” she asked with a raised eyebrow, and he giggled again.

“Oh, no. I mean, yes. I mean, er… You’re right. I don’t drink much. And I didn’t know I was, you see,” he explained. Words could be so very difficult sometimes. Not just when he was drunk, but any other time too, whenever he was too emotional. And other people used them so strangely, saying things they don’t mean and expecting him to know things that they never said. 

“Sure thing, English,” the woman said, although Newt wasn’t sure at all. “You here alone?”

He blinked slowly as he processed the question. “Yes. But I don’t want to be.”

She smiled sweetly and leant closer, bending down over the bar so that, had he wanted to, he could have seen right down her dress. But instead, he turned pink and looked down at his empty glass to avert his eyes entirely. Even if he had wanted to, it wouldn’t have been right to take advantage of an unfortunate situation like that. Really, dresses were so inconvenient. “I could join you, if you want,” she offered.

“That’s very kind,” Newt murmured. “I wouldn’t want to keep you if you have other plans, though.”

“Nah, think nothin’ of it. I can’t let a guy like you be all lonely,” she insisted in a voice that was practically a purr. “Besides, I think I’d like to get to know you. What’s your name, honey?”

“Newt,” he replied, a faint flush of pleasure tinting his cheeks. She was so friendly, it was really quite lovely. People didn’t usually want to get to know him at all. 

“Aw, well hey there, Newt. I’m Tallulah. So, what brings you to New York?”

In his drunken haze and his eagerness to answer, he almost forgot that he was in a muggle establishment and very definitely not allowed to talk about what he did. “Well, I was researching ma- um, animals. Lots of them. Very interesting stuff, really. I have a case, and a friend, and I’m writing a book. I could do that in London, of course, but I like New York, I think. I have a sort of… thing.” He waved his hand vaguely, a faint smile playing about his face at the motion. He had more or less trained himself out of some of his more unusual habits, or at least out of showing them off in public, but there was something so very satisfying about letting his hands flap through the air like the wings of a billywig. And even more so when the pleasant buzz of alcohol was filling him. He closed his eyes and swayed faintly on his stool - or perhaps he didn’t. He wasn’t entirely sure anymore. The whole room seemed to be moving. 

Tallulah laughed faintly and touched his arm far too lightly and far too suddenly, making him recoil so quickly that he nearly toppled out of his seat. “You okay there, honey?” she asked, and the sweet tone to her voice seemed to have dropped away. Did she think he was strange now? He didn’t want her touching him, but that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate her friendliness. People could be so confusing sometimes.

He rubbed his arm where Tallulah had touched him in an attempt to dissipate the residual sensation of contact that had been left behind, even after she had withdrawn her hand. Once he had soothed himself enough so that his skin no longer prickled with discomfort, he leant forward, elbows on the counter to support himself. It was only then that he realised he had been asked a question and not provided an answer. “I think I’m drunk,” he murmured. He was about to glance up at Tallulah, until he remembered how low cut her dress was, and he didn’t want her to think that he was trying to look at her breasts. Granted, it would be hard not to look when her neckline was so very low, but still.

“No kidding,” she said, but that friendly demeanour hadn’t quite returned yet. “Hey, listen, d’you wanna get out of here?” Perhaps she found crowded spaces a little challenging too. It was a little easier for him with the alcohol running through him, making him feel warm and the world a little less overwhelming. It would probably get worse later on, but for the time being, he was okay. But she wasn’t as drunk as him, so maybe it was starting to overwhelm her. And that, perhaps, was why she had stopped seeming quite as friendly. He knew he found politeness hard when everything was starting to get too much. But he was waiting for Jacob, and he couldn’t leave with a stranger.

“You could go outside, if you like. That might help. But I don’t want to.”

“Oh,” she said, and he couldn’t read her tone at all. “Alright, then.”

But before he had to work it out, he heard a familiar voice behind him. “Hey, buddy. Sorry I’m late,” Jacob said, and Newt nearly toppled off of his chair as he turned around to look at his lover. His eyes couldn’t quite focus, but he still looked beautiful. He always looked beautiful.

“Hello,” Newt murmured as he tried to will the world to stop spinning around him.

“Whoa, how much have you had?” Jacob asked with a faint chuckle.

“I don’t know. A lot, I think. Maybe. I don’t know.”

Jacob seemed to survey him for a moment before speaking again. “Yeah, okay. I think you need to go home. Come here,” he said in such a soft voice that Newt couldn’t help beaming as he staggered to his feet and practically collapsed against Jacob’s chest. 

“Hello,” he said again with a faint giggle, and Jacob wrapped his arms around him to keep him steady. It was nice. He was nice. And he smelled wonderful, like cookies and love. 

“You really are drunk. Come on, you.”

“Newt, baby, who’s your friend?” Tallulah asked with a faint note of confusion to her voice, and Newt blinked blearily. She had called him baby. Jacob called him baby when they were alone together, or else in the company of those select few who were able to know about their relationship. Was that her way of being friendly, or was she flirting with him? He wasn’t entirely sure. 

“Jacob… He’s Jacob. And only he gets to call me baby,” Newt replied, and he couldn’t stop his words slurring together slightly. 

“He… oh.  _ Oh _ . You know, you coulda said earlier,” Tallulah said, and when Newt glanced up at her, she was frowning at him. But she hadn’t called him baby until that point, how was he supposed to know she might want to? She muttered something that sounded vaguely like ‘fairies’, but that made even less sense. She was a muggle, wasn’t she? How could she even know about fairies? And even if she did, they were hardly relevant.

“Okay, okay, come on, Newt. Time to go now,” Jacob said hastily as he dragged Newt towards the door. He seemed to really want to go, but Newt wasn’t sure exactly why. Maybe he didn’t like that someone else had been calling Newt ‘baby’, or perhaps he was worried about Newt being too drunk. Either way, Newt allowed himself to be dragged out of the bar with barely a mumbled ‘goodbye’ towards Tallulah, who was standing there looking awfully put-out. But no matter how nice she had at least initially been, he’d rather leave with Jacob than stay and work out what on Earth was going on.

Walking, Newt decided, was almost as difficult as understanding things. His feet didn’t want to cooperate with his brain, which wasn’t particularly working well to begin with. It felt all fuzzy and weighed down. “I think my brain has turned into a waterlogged puffskein,” he announced as he clutched onto Jacob’s shoulder to keep himself upright. Or semi-upright, at least. He really had been drinking an awful lot. “I didn’t mean to, though. I didn’t know there was alcohol in my drinks,” he said aloud.

Jacob laughed faintly at that, and Newt felt rather like he was being teased. But no one had told him, how was he supposed to know? “You’re making even less sense than usual, baby,” he said, and Newt didn’t need to look at his face to know that he was smiling. 

“Why is it my fault when people don’t understand me and my fault when I don’t understand people?” he wondered, more to himself than to Jacob. “And why do ladies wear dresses like that? Her breasts were all… out.”

At this, Jacob laughed so hard that they had to stop walking for a few seconds. Newt didn’t mind that at all, staying upright was much easier while stationary, and it meant that Jacob’s bulk was a nicely firm surface for him to lean against, even if he was shaking with laughter. “Oh, baby, oh… She wanted you to see them.”

“Why?”

“Because she thought you were cute.”

Slowly, Newt’s hazy mind connected the dots, and a bright smile of realisation lit up his face. “Oh! She was flirting!” he said, as if the whole world made sense all of a sudden. But as quickly as it had appeared, the smile disappeared and turned into a confused frown. “So she didn’t want to be friends, she just wanted to have sex with me.” He considered this information for a moment. She had been pretty, he supposed, but he didn’t want her. He didn‘t want anyone but his Jacob - or at the very least, he didn’t want anyone without his Jacob also wanting them. But the idea of her wanting him like that was, although a little flattering, not an appealing one. “I’d much rather you have sex with me,” he announced.

Jacob managed to bite back the majority of his laughter this time, but Newt recognised the familiar strain of an attempt to contain it in his voice when he spoke. “Thanks, baby. That’s good to know.”

Now that he thought about it, he really would rather like Jacob to have sex with him. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d have the coordination to fuck in this state, when putting one foot in front of the other and walking was a challenge, unless he just laid back and let Jacob ravage him. Oh, now that was a nice thought, and an even nicer mental image… And certain parts of his body seemed to agree. Yes, Jacob was definitely the most attractive human being Newt had ever seen, and the fact that he was blessed enough to get to kiss him and hold him and fuck him was almost too good to believe. But he had enough sense about him not to simply seize Jacob and kiss him right there in the street, however. That really would get the neighbours talking, but it could also lose Jacob everything he’d worked for, and no amount of arousal was worth that. So Newt settled for leaning against Jacob as they walked while the affection warmed him from the inside, positively radiating out of him.

“I love you,” he mumbled, blinking at Jacob through unfocused eyes. “I mean it, even though my brain is a puffskein. And I’m not just saying that because I’m drunk or because I want you to fuck me, although both of those things are true. I really, honestly do love you.”

Jacob smiled at him, and even if he had been completely sober, Newt could have melted into an incoherent puddle at how beautiful he was and the pure and complete adoration in his eyes. Even when he was a mess, even when he could have made him jealous or angry, Jacob still looked at him like that. “I love you too, you crazy, crazy man.”

**Author's Note:**

> I will write something with actual plot and thought to it soon I swear. I do have plans but the tiny gremlin that lives in my brain and fuels my writing is being uncooperative, so this is what happened instead. I almost didn't post this since I can't tell if it's too ridiculous or not, but I wanted to get something up and the brain gremlin just let me do this. 
> 
> I'm writing this note at nearly 3am and most of the work on this fic has occurred between the hours of 11pm and 4am this weekend, so you can blame that fact if it's all terrible


End file.
